


Perils Of Avatar Hunting - A Comprehensive List

by Blue_Rive



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Pre-Canon, episodic, i'm trying to match the style of the og show!!, probably, so episodic with some longer plot arcs, the first chapter's just a short funny oneshot, they'll probably get longer but the tone will stay about the same, zuko is a dumbass and i love him so much
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:21:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,019
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24400492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue_Rive/pseuds/Blue_Rive
Summary: There is a little less than three years of unaccounted time Zuko spent Avatar hunting and chasing after literally every mystical-looking light. Some shit's got to have gone down.
Relationships: Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 259





	Perils Of Avatar Hunting - A Comprehensive List

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuffinLance](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuffinLance/gifts).



> i'm not super happy with this first chapter- it's a bit of a little joke oneshot i wrote when i was feeling out the characters and trying to get a sense of the general vibe of this fic, really, but i thought i'd publish it because i crave that sweet sweet validation and like people to read my stuff
> 
> this fic is gifted to MuffinLance, because their stuff is a pretty big inspiration for me, and specifically i've picked up a few of their headcanons/things they've talked about possibly putting in their fic Cheating At Pai Sho and want to cite them on that, but the crew isn't actually theirs! (sushi and the komodo-rhinos will show up later, though, and those are muffinlance's!)
> 
> a list of the crew - the first chapter features three of them above the others, but later on i'm hoping to talk about/do a character study on all of them!
> 
> -lieutenant jee - canon  
> -daichi - second most competent naval officer on the ship (it's a very low bar), reassigned from active service after a knee injury, engineer, nonbender  
> -hideki - pikesman, extremely intelligent person who is somehow never blessed with the wani crew's shared single braincell, bender  
> -mariko - pikeswoman, nonbender, used to have an actual high ranking position and was moving up in the world, before being reassigned to the wani. is not bitter. shut up  
> -akimitsu - ship's cook, practical, bad at actually communicating with people, used to be a servant at the palace, fully deaf (as opposed to Zuko, who's partially deaf, and the rest of the crew, who'll be there soon enough with all the yelling)  
> -ichiro - shy, unskilled in combat, trusting, most definitely not old enough to enlist, exactly the kind of person who'd be assigned to the 41st division if his luck had worked out just a little differently  
> -kazue - worryingly unconcerned about everything, nonbender, helmsman, nonbinary
> 
> they're all mostly disabled or have something else keeping them from active service- the wani isn't a _bad_ posting necessarily, but it's not exactly where the fire lord sends his most promising soldiers. akimitsu, ichiro, and kazue are all close-ish to zuko's age, (19, 15, and 22 respectively), and everyone else is around 35-55.

The first month, Zuko had been a mess. Prince Iroh had spent all his time in the kid’s quarters and everyone else had tiptoed around them. Lieutenant Jee didn’t know either one, and it felt a bit like intruding. It wasn’t like they were the type of people who’d normally be dealing with royalty. They  _ were  _ that fun little blend of fairly lucky and extremely unlucky that palace servants and the like tended to be, but they were also sailors from the colonies. Half of them had never even  _ seen  _ the palace. And this situation couldn’t be called normal by any sense of the word. 

The second month, Zuko had  _ still  _ been a mess, but the sort of mess that was up and about (good!) and firebending (good!) and yelling at the crew (extremely irritating, especially because Jee had a sense of dignity that did not take well to being ordered around by a thirteen-almost-fourteen year old) and weirdly focused on his search for the Avatar because he was either stubborn enough or stupid enough not to realize that’d been a cursory thing thought up as a final insult to his honor (okay? Jee didn’t care about the prince’s personal life or doomed quests or whatever, but it did mean they had to do a lot of sailing around and working.). 

Third month- the one they were on- and everything above still applied, but now that Prince Iroh had stopped watching over Zuko like a mama turtleduck over her eggs, the crew had decided to befriend him. 

A few of the crew were actually reasonably close-ish to Zuko’s age, which meant they got on well. Jee was glad about this, in theory, but dealing with a group of teenagers and twenty-somethings was not his idea of a good time, especially when one of them actually had the authority to order him around. 

Ten minutes ago, Kazue, Ichiro, and Akimitsu had all been down in the hold, ‘gathering up some things they’d brought on shore leave’. Five minutes ago, Zuko had stomped down after them. About two seconds ago, smoke had begun to rise from the hold. Lieutenant Jee firmly decided none of that was his problem. 

\---

Zuko had forgotten that metal didn’t burn. He really wished it did, because he had already SAID that he DID NOT agree to do this and that NO I DO NOT WANT TEA AND I AM NOT DOING THIS UNCLE YOU CAN BUT I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO LEAVE ME ALONE.

“Damn,” Kazue said, perched on the top of a box that he was  _ pretty  _ sure contained some extremely breakable teapots and other similarly fragile junk Uncle collected. “What did that tsungi horn ever do to you?” 

“Forced me to play it! At music night! Which I already said I do not want to participate in! I need to capture the Avatar, I don’t have  _ time  _ for that kind of stuff!” 

“And?” 

“I haven’t practiced in _ months _ , leave me alone!” Zuko kind of half-shoved-half-kicked the tsungi horn away from him to avoid touching the searing hot metal. Ichiro had to duck out of the way, but he was the one who’d SHOVED IT at Zuko in the first place, so it was COMPLETELY JUSTIFIED and entirely his own fault if he got hit on the head with it. 

“Oh, so that’s the real reason.” Kazue leaned back on the crate they were sitting on, dragging another one over with their toes. “Hey, I think you accidentally set some other things on fire,” they added, with the kind of nonchalance only they could achieve.

“Those things were  _ on purpose  _ because they are  _ also  _ musical instruments!”

“The extra hay for the komodo rhinos is a musical instrument? Huh. That’s news to me.” 

Ichiro went pale. “There’s an  _ actual fire?”  _

Akimitsu held up a finger- not signing, but it gets across the message of  _ wait one second  _ well enough _.  _ He clambered over a few crates, instead of taking the  _ cleared-off path  _ out of the hold (and okay, Zuko knew he was a hypocrite, but Akimitsu could at LEAST have taken the courtesy to go via the rafters). 

Ichiro looked rapidly from him to Kazue, backing out of the hold. “I’m gonna go, uh, help Akimitsu!” 

“I’m coming too,” said Zuko, because while there  _ were  _ probably dangers to leaving Kazue unsupervised with live fire, there were more dangers to staying in a cargo hold that was currently SUPER ON FIRE.

“Oh, uh-” 

“What?” 

“Nothing! Let’s go!” Ichiro dragged Zuko out of the door, catching Kazue by the ankle and tugging them off the crate too, making them tumble off with the sound of breaking porcelain. 

They met Akimitsu on the way out- he was carrying a bucket of water, which he threw on the fire in the hold and also on Zuko. 

_ “Watch what you’re doing with that!”  _ Zuko yelled, firebending himself dry quickly enough to make Ichiro, who still had a grip on his shoulder, yelp and jump back from the heat. 

“Sorry, sorry,” Akimitsu signed, ducking his head in a decent court bow, “but also…” In lieu of signing  _ fire,  _ he just jabbed his thumb in the general direction of the hold. 

Zuko couldn’t exactly argue, so he settled for just silently fuming and storming off to get his own bucket, which, wait. He could probably just bend the flames down. He didn’t  _ like  _ doing it, but it was faster than just… putting it out, like some nonbender or Earth Kingdom peasant. The others weren’t benders, so it probably hadn’t occurred to them. Or, Kazue had realized and not said because they enjoyed watching everyone else panic, Ichiro had realized and not said because Zuko had been running out the door and then had water thrown on him, and Akimitsu probably just hadn’t remembered because he was actually fairly competently dealing with the fire and would have mentioned if he’d remembered it. Which was… great. Hopefully nothing important had been set on fire. 

Besides the musical instruments. Those could BURN and DIE IN HELL. 

\---

“I’m so glad you’re making friends, nephew!”

“Shut up forever.” 

**Author's Note:**

> leave a comment if you liked!


End file.
